¿Qué hay de nuestro aquí? Cómo se perciben en los medios algunas minorías residentes en Cataluña

Abstract

What of us is in this? was a research project sponsored by the Catalan Audiovisual Council which was carried out in 2006. Its main purpose was to collect the views of Catalonia-resident Arabs (mostly North-African), Gypsies and Romanians on both the local media (either Catalan or Spanish) and the way they their cultural groups are represented in them. All the people that took part in this research were fully aware of the kind of media representation they are subjected to and believed this made them "invisible" in a sense, and labeled them as (and reduced their identity to) being merely immigrants. On top of this conscious and critical reading of media messages (and regardless of their education level, their gender, their age or their ethnic background), research participants emphasized how important this distorted representation is as it poses a genuine pitfall for their social participation.